I normally don’t link to outside blogs but this one needs to be mentioned because it relates to my Dell Mini 9 Leopard install video. Here’s the story on Gizmodo, here it is on 9 to 5 Mac.
I found it odd that Wired had posted a video on how to install Leopard on an MSI Wind when a) it was sort of old news, and b) it was a much more complicated process than the one I used. But even more odd was the fact that they were suggesting people download a hacked version of Leopard from Pirate Bay. Apple eventually got wind (pun intentional) of it and early reports were that they were suing Wired. Now that the dust has settled it appears that Wired has just been asked to pull the video.
Will I be asked to pull my video? I hope not – but I also doubt it. The fact is that in my video you can see me break the seal on a brand new Leopard box. No where do I ever suggest stealing Leopard – quite the opposite. If you’re going to experiment with Leopard on a non-apple box I think you should go out and get a fresh copy.
I’ll also give the update that our Dell Mini Hackintosh is still working great. However, if and when Apple releases a reasonable replacement for it, we’ll sell the Dell and buy a real Apple.
Apple has always often been the innovator. The company that sets the trends. We’ve seen it time and time again with the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone. And not just full products but also ideas and technology, like adopting firewire early or dropping floppy discs early, or integrating touch so well. Think about how the touch capabilities on the iPhone has influenced a plethora of copy cat products.
Some might believe that Apple innovated the GUI and the mouse. But they DIDN’T, they stole plagiarized those technologies during a visit to PARC, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center. Some of Apple’s best innovations have been things that they’ve RE-invented. But Apple hasn’t really innovated anything since the iPhone – and that was years ago. Every MacWorld and WWDC since then has been mostly disappointing.
It’s time for Apple to “innovate” again. There are 4 products I saw at CES that Apple needs to look at, reverse engineer, license, or plagiarize. Read the rest of this entry »
When my Xbox HD DVD drive wouldn’t mount under windows inside of VM Ware (gosh, why would I need that?) I decided to pick up the LG GGW-H20L. It is a Super Multi-Blue optical drive that reads basically every disc format including Blu-ray and HD DVD and also burns Blu-ray RW’s and RE’s. I picked mine up a the local Fry’s Electronics here in Vegas for around $250.
Installing it is tricky because this drive has a sata connection and the Mac Pro’s standard connection for optical drives is Ultra-ATA. There are two ways to install a Sata optical drive: First there are some kits which include an Ultra-ATA to Sata adaptor that plugs into the back of the unit and then provides a sata connector. But I’ve found these a little hard to install as the cables don’t really lock in and come loose too easily when sliding the drive bay back into the mac. Also I’m a little leery of using the interface adaptor with one fear being a speed loss, although it’s probably fine.
The second install method is to use one of the unused sata connectors on the Mac Pro motherboard. This is a slightly more involved process because the sata connectors are hard to get to. But it’s no match for a phillips screwdriver. If you’re game I’ve worked up a how-to guide with lots of photos. It is christening the new guides section of the site… >>READ…
The Macworld keynote is tomorrow morning and as everyone knows by now, it will be without Steve Jobs. Tomorrow the world will learn that Apple CAN announce exciting new products without Steve giving the presentation. It might not be AS exciting as hearing it from Steve, but the stock can and will go up when exciting things are announced. Overall this is a good thing for Apple, stockholders, and the Apple community. Apple needed to make this change – my reasons follow… UPDATED…
Apparently I’m not the only one with a blown ATI X1900. It might be because I never cleaned out the dust build up. My card was worse than the one shown at xlr8yourmac (see link). This week my monitors started turning off after a few minutes of use. Upon inspection we found a small burn mark on the card. So we ordered a replacement, an ATI Radeon HD 3870 Mac and PC Edition which sounds like a good card.
Inside the package is the card, an install disc and the note shown above that says “Install the Mac software before the hardware.” How is it possible to install the software before the hardware when my current card is blown? Read the rest of this entry »
Happy New Year! About an hour ago there was a roar outside that sounded like a 747 driving down my quiet residential street. It was the constant and combined blasts of thousands of fireworks going off 10 to 15 miles away at the Las Vegas Strip. It was so loud that it could even be heard over the phone. My buddy David and I were discussing our predictions for 2009. At this late hour I can’t remember all of them, but here are a few to get the ball rolling. Jump in and add your own predictions down in the comments…
I’ve been working day and night over the holiday weekend on my iphone app. I suppose normally I would just close my laptop lid in between sessions but this weekend I was trying to stay motivated to keep working. So my laptop was left on most all weekend. Two important points: One is that I’ve been using it in this configuration (pictured) with the extra keyboard and mouse. Second is that I have a cat. And while I hate love her, she is a very annoying cat. Every few minutes she’ll try to either sit on my lap or on the keyboard and even as I write this I have to keep telling her to NOT WALK ACROSS MY KEYBOARD. I think she likes the heat it gives off and many times I’ve come home to find that she’s deleted stuff, moved files around, etc. (UPDATED 12/2/08) Read the rest of this entry »
The other day I discussed Apple’s move to DisplayPort on the new MacBooks. Their other big news was that they completely dropped firewire on the MacBook, and only have firewire 800 on MacBook Pros. In blogger terms this is old news (over a week ago) and has already been discussed to death by many other sites. Yet for me it is still something that has to be considered at a practical level. Like it or not firewire is on the way out and I have a lot of firewire drives. On the other hand, my brand new mac pro still has firewire and I’ll be able to use these drives for years to come. So the wheels are turning and I’m studying different solutions.
Every few years that old Moore’s Law kicks in and new hard drives come out that double or more the capacity of the old ones. My MOA is that whan I worry a drive is about to die, I typically copy the entire contents of the old drive into a folder on the new one. By now I’ve done this several times over and inside a 1TB drive I might have a folder which contains a old 250GB drive and inside that I have a folder that contains an old 100GB drive, inside which I have a folder with contents from several powerbooks ago. But now it’s time to organize things better and upgrade to some serious storage.
But what storage solutions are right for my home system? What will give me the most speed, the highest capacity, and reasonable data protection for the best price? Of course these questions can’t be completely answered without first knowing what the various applications for the storage are. Over the next few posts I want to show some different options that I’m considering. I also want to talk some history and review the various drives that I have now and use at home and at work. This discussion will take several days. Read the rest of this entry »
In keeping with the current theme, here’s a video of me installing a new hard drive in a G4 Powerbook. At the start of the video all the screws had already been taken out.
This was my wife’s couch computer. I sold it to a buddy for almost enough to completely pay for it’s replacement: a hacintoshDell mini 9. It’s ordered and should be here middle of November. Not sure why it takes so long – something to do with it being built to order. But more on that when it comes in.
This weekend we had the carpets cleaned which required that we picked up everything off the floors. In several rooms this meant stacking items on top of a bed or a couch. When the guys were finished, seeing all that fresh empty real estate was inspiring. (I like open spaces in a house.) So we decided to take on to the task of trying to clean things up enough to keep the floors clear of clutter. In my home office the job was to clean my desk of several years of paper and junk and to move out the G5 mac to make room for my new 8-core mac pro.
The desert is dusty
Let me interject that the task was too daunting for me to do alone and that my wife helped a great deal with organization. But the real clean up was my responsibility. I wish I had taken a picture before starting the project, but here it is after almost everything was removed from the table.
Skipping ahead ahead a few hours, past the boring cleaning process and way past the awful disgustingness I found underneath my amplifier, I finally had my 8-core placed up on the sterilized Ikea desk ready to plug in to my monitor, mouse and keyboard. But I quickly realized that Apple had also done some house cleaning. Read the rest of this entry »
I normally don’t link to outside blogs but this one needs to be mentioned because it relates to my Dell Mini 9 Leopard install video. Here’s the story on Gizmodo, here it is on 9 to 5 Mac.
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The Macworld keynote is tomorrow morning and as everyone knows by now, it will be without Steve Jobs. Tomorrow the world will learn that Apple CAN announce exciting new products without Steve giving the presentation. It might not be AS exciting as hearing it from Steve, but the stock can and will go up when exciting things are announced. Overall this is a good thing for Apple, stockholders, and the Apple community. Apple needed to make this change – my reasons follow… UPDATED…
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